So, I bought one of these H-1 printers way back during the Indiegogo campaign for it. I got a little frustrated with it initially due to the lack of instructions for it at the time so ended up throwing it in my closet and forgot about it until recently when I found it. So I'm looking at putting this thing together. I see that there is now an 61 page assembly manual (found that on reprap's wiki), it looks like a pretty complex task, with a lot of inaccuracy in the parts requiring extra drilling and such.

One question I have immediately is are there any templates for bending the rods for the frame? Any recommendations on the best way to bend these? I'm a little perturbed that something that needs to be somewhat precise like this, didn't come prebent to a specification to ensure the frame is properly aligned.

Also, I see there was at some point an H1.1 upgrade kit. Are these still available anywhere? What exactly does it upgrade? Are they really important upgrades or can I get by on the original H1 parts?

Are there any mods people consider absolutely necessary for this 3d printer to function in a respectable way?

I'm pretty sure I've got everything I need to create a functioning 3d printer as long as the parts aren't too inaccurate and I can make them work. When I ordered the 3d printer, I did the plastic + hardware kit, and got an controller board for it from ebay. Forget which board it is exactly but the documentation says it's based on reprap 1.3a, and it has a USB connection instead of the outdated parallel. Have 4 nema 17 stepper motors, and 4 motor driver boards for them. Also 2 - 10k thermistors, a small package of 6.8 ohm wire resistors. And I've got an old PC psu to use for power. Oh, and a 2 lb spool of 1.75mm filament. This is of course assuming the parts kit isn't missing anything. So many little parts, and I haven't opened any yet to compare them to the parts list in the assembly manual. If something is missing from the kit, after this long I imagine I'm probably just screwed lol.

Anyway, I welcome any advice anyone has before I start putting this thing together.

I do not have an H-1 and as you know it is an old printer and upgrades, parts, etc. are no longer available.There is no sense in talking about the upgrade because it is no longer available. Ebay may have something.I was able to dig out some threads you might want to read, they are as follows:viewforum.php?f=52

I was asking about what exactly the h1.1 upgraded because I imagine the upgrades could be sourced elsewhere. If it's hardware component upgrades like bearings and such, I doubt they used a bearing design that was completely unique to the h1. If I know what the kit contained, I may be able to find them elsewhere.

The most important thing that I'd like to find is a template for bending the frame rods. It looks like they are incredibly important to be bent correctly, because if they aren't you are liable to have one of your Z-Axis poles out of square slightly which would cause binding. This is why it seems like something this important would have been pre-bent to a specification.

When reading through old posts and such I have seen some posts within the past couple months of people that say they are still using this printer. So I'm really hoping someone like that can reply.